


Family Matters

by cgf_kat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Lance in Cuba, Langst, Post-Canon, Team, Team Feels, Team as Family, Torture, Whump, friends - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-26 23:51:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18727390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cgf_kat/pseuds/cgf_kat
Summary: “Who’s going to come looking for you, Paladin? That little family of yours? Against a handful of highly trained Galra officers?”Lance growls through his teeth, but his mouth has gone dry. Do they know where his family is? They must. If they’ve been watching him enough to grab him the way they did…“And what are you, now? Without a lion?” the harsh voice accuses. “Can’t call for help with your head anymore, can you?”***Months after the lions leave, Lance finds himself in some trouble.





	Family Matters

The sensation of waking up somewhere unfamiliar, unsure of how he got there—tied, blindfolded, and gagged, no less—isn’t unfamiliar in itself, but it’s certainly something Lance isn’t so used to anymore. For a moment, as he tests the ropes keeping his ankles together and his wrists tied behind his back, the alarm clawing at his throat is almost a strange sort of hope.

This isn’t supposed to happen. Not anymore. The war is over, he’s done with that. No more. But…

But if he’s not dreaming, maybe the end of the war was a dream. Maybe it’s not over. It didn’t happen that way. Allura isn’t— 

Lance chokes back a strange sound as the cold of the hard floor under him seeps into his bones, and reality reasserts itself. He can feel the edge of the blindfold rubbing against the marks on his cheeks; the collar of the jacket brushing against the back of his neck is familiar, and he didn’t have this jacket before the war. 

Most glaring of all is the aching, empty place in his mind where Red used to be. 

It was a foolish hope anyway. 

The sound of a door creaking open comes from above him, sending him scrambling to push himself up against the wall at his back—concrete? Stone?—and now sure he’s in a basement or cellar of some kind. It’s too cool around him to be above ground for this time of year anyway.

If he’s even still in Cuba. 

Heavy footsteps pound down what sounds like wooden stairs; more than one set. Low sounds of amusement and delight, probably as they realize he’s awake. Lance straightens, trying to resist the urge to sink back against the wall even with his heart beating hard in his chest and his blood rushing in his ears. 

The first set of footsteps reach the floor and come for him, and there isn’t enough air. How did this even happen? He was just...walking to town. It was nice out. Sylvio and Nadia asked to come, but Lisa wanted them to finish their chores instead. Quiznak, at least the kids hadn’t been with him— 

Hands large enough to easily wrap all the way around his upper arms seize him and shake, knocking his head into the wall behind him and the breath from his lungs.

Clawed, massive hands. Galra. 

“I’ve been waiting a long time to get my hands on a paladin,” a low voice growls.

Lance is seeing stars in the darkness from the blindfold, and the rough material in his mouth makes pulling air back in difficult. He chokes around it, unable to answer.

“We all have,” another voice echoes, this one more bored and less angry, but still. “So save some for the rest of us. And we need him alive. Probably.”

Probably?

A muffled sound of protest escapes his throat; he tries to turn it into something angry. Menacing.  _ Something _ . He surges forward, to let them know he won’t make this easy for them, but he doesn’t get far. All he gets is another knock to the head as he’s shoved back again. 

A harsh laugh from the voice closer to him, the one pushing him into the wall, and one hand releases his arm long enough to swipe the gag from his mouth. Lance hisses as a claw rakes the skin across his jaw on the way down. 

“Something to say, Paladin?”

His teeth clench as he bares them, growling. If he can’t glare at them, that will have to do. “You think you’ll get away with this?”

Part of him listens from afar, quiet, doubt curling into an ache in his gut at his own words.

***

_ Two Days Ago _

“The Atlas was delayed again?”

Pidge shrugs on the small screen, half distracted by something beyond her own phone. “Yeah, you know; always another diplomatic mission. It’s still a mess out there.”

“Yeah…” Lance lets out a heavy breath, swinging his feet off the edge of the barn loft. He hasn’t seen Hunk or Shiro since Altea a few months ago. 

He hasn’t seen any of them in person since then. Since...since the lions left. 

“Maybe we can get something together next month,” Pidge says. “They should be back by then, and I think Keith was gonna be on Earth about then...maybe. I don’t remember; I’m never sure where he is.”

Lance snorts. “Right.”

Pidge raises an eyebrow at him; he thinks she’s going to say something else, but a crash on the other end of the line somewhere distracts her and she whips her head to the source.

“No! Chip! Put that down! Matt, where’d you run off to!” She groans. “Sorry, Lance; I gotta go. I’ll call y—hey stop that right n—!”

The screen blurs into motion and the white and orange of Pidge’s coat before going blank entirely. 

Lance huffs again; he can’t blame her, not really, but...anyway. 

“Uncle Lance? Whatcha doing up here?”

He glances over his shoulder at the rustle of hay near the ladder to find Nadia climbing up into the loft with him. He can’t help but smile as he flashes his now-dark phone at her. “Just talking to Pidge.”

“Oh good! She hasn’t called in a while.” 

“Since when do you keep up?”

Nadia shrugs, and crawls over to fit herself under his arm. “Since always. Cause when you don’t talk to your friends you get sad.”

“What?” he challenges. Well...maybe he does. That’s kind of what he’s doing up here, if he’s honest with himself. Moping. 

But it’s hard to do that with his niece wrapping her arms around him and squeezing. “You do! So when you haven’t talked to them in a while I have to cheer you up. Not that I mind. I missed you.”

Lance returns the embrace with a chuckle. Maybe he squeezes a little too tight himself, but...

He could be out there, if he wanted to be. On the Atlas with Hunk and Shiro. Or at the Garrison with Pidge and Matt. But...if he was there, he wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t see his niece and nephew every day. He wouldn’t see his mom, his dad…

And after losing Allura…and then the lions...

“Uncle Lance, I can’t breathe!” Nadia gasps.

Lance blinks, loosens his grip quickly and pulls away.

***

_ Now _

“Who’s going to come looking for you, Paladin? That little family of yours? Against a handful of highly trained Galra officers?”

Lance growls through his teeth, but his mouth has gone dry. Do they know where his family is? They must. If they’ve been watching him enough to grab him the way they did…

He has to get out of here; he has to protect them. He tries to struggle again, but it doesn't help. 

“And what are  _ you _ , now? Without a lion?” the harsh voice accuses. “Can’t call for help with your head anymore, can you?”

“What do you want?” Lance huffs, sharp and impatient. His head hurts, and this isn’t supposed to be happening. Why is this happening? He should be safe. His family should be safe...

The hands around his arms tighten, the point of one claw beginning to dig into the soft flesh at the back of his right arm, slow and deliberate. Lance bites off a strangled gasp. 

There are more footsteps, movement beside him, and what feels like the cool edge of a knife brushes his cheek. He pulls in a quick, swallow breath, struggling to fight to urge to move. “That’s simple enough,” a new voice taunts. Lance can scarcely hear it over the sound of his own heart. 

How many of them are there?

He cries out as the claw in his arm thrusts suddenly deeper, and then is abruptly gone, scraping carelessly at the edges of the wound as the Galra it belongs to pulls away. They all pull away.

He’s not going to get a real answer, is he? 

Lance swallows, acutely aware of the blood dripping down his arm inside his sleeve and the back-tracing footsteps that stop too soon. He would rather hear them retreat further and pound back up the steps, but they don’t. Not yet. Of course he isn’t that lucky. Pulling himself up straight again against the wall, he considers whether he should keep demanding answers, or if that would only provoke them more.

He doesn’t get the chance to think about it too much. Instead the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as something jabs into his side, and the faint sparking in his periphery only provides a split second of warning before his body arcs in agony. 

Any hope he had that they might be somewhere with help nearby disappears when they don’t seem to care that he screams. 

***

Sometimes when Lance dreams, he dreams everything is as it should be. He dreams and his grandparents are still here. He dreams and Allura is still alive. 

The first time was confusing. He came downstairs and he thought it was the morning after he’d returned to Cuba with his family, but they were there. His grandfather was making breakfast for his parents and his grandma was on the sofa with Allura, teaching her how to knit. He didn’t know he was dreaming, but he knew they’d been gone. He knew they shouldn’t be there. But no one said anything about the fact that they’d died, and as dreams are, it didn’t take long for him not to care how they were back. 

Sometimes those dreams are what keep him going. They’re clearer than normal dreams; there isn’t a plot, but they make more sense. They feel more real. They’re not exciting, but they’re comfortable. He dreams moments like the ones that made up his family’s lives before the war. Cooking, running the farm, being together. Knitting and not understanding why Allura is so determined to master it. 

“If you want something, I can make it!” he teases her. 

“I fought an intergalactic war and recreated infinite realities, Lance; now I would like to be able to produce simple gifts for those I care about. IS that so much to ask?”

“Doesn’t seem like your fingers are agreeing with you on the _ simple  _ part.”

Every time he says it Allura’s eyes narrow to that dangerous gleam that used to scare him; now it makes him laugh. 

“Knitting will not defeat me.”

She’s been working on the same set of colored scarves for him and the others since the dreams began, fighting dropped stitches and inconsistent widths. Sometimes her progress jumps, and though he doesn’t dream those parts, too, there is an impression that half of their lives are on Altea.

Lance sleeps, and he lives a life within a life. Not as often as he did those first few months after the war, but often enough still. And when he dreams, as dreams are, he doesn’t know that’s all it is.

This time it begins almost as it always does. His feet hit the bottom step, but this time his grandmother is on her end of the couch alone, her knitting basket at her feet. The angle of the light through the windows tells him afternoon; not morning. Laughing from outside tells him where his niece and nephew are, and through the living room windows he catches a glimpse of a white-haired figure in the distance in the Juniberry field. 

Something is...wrong. He can’t pinpoint what, but his stomach is roiling and he feels uneasy as he perches on the edge of the couch near his grandmother.

“That’s a sweater,” he says. “Who needs another one?

“You do! Aren’t you leaving tomorrow?”

Lance chuckles. “Just for the Garrison for a few days to meet up with the others.”

“Not Altea?”

“Not until next month, and Keith isn’t passing that way for a while, so we’re meeting in Arizona. And aren’t you two coming to Altea with us this time?”   


She smiles. “You said there are fields bigger than ours with those flowers?”

“Loads of them.”

When he glances up, out the window to their own field, Allura is gone. When his smile fades, his grandmother raises an eyebrow at him. “What’s wrong, dear?”

He blinks. “I uh...I don’t know.” It’s more than that. What is it? “I think...I think I…”

The smack from the screen door at the front of the house makes him jump. It’s never made him jump before. Like his nerves are shot, but he doesn’t understand why. 

“Lance!”

Allura? She sounds...worried? But why? She rounds the corner into the living room at top speed, only slowing down when she sees him. Only calming down and seeming to shove the concern from her eyes and paste on a smile when he stands to meet her. 

“Allura?”

“I uhm…” She lets out a breath. “Have you packed?” she asks. 

“Not yet, but I don’t think they’ll miss me too much if we’re a little late.”

“Don’t say that!”

Lance blinks. “I was joking…”

Allura blinks, too, as if she realizes she overreacted. “Of course, I only mean…”

“Are you okay?” he asks. The way she’s acting isn’t helping his own nebulous uneasiness. 

Allura pulls him into an embrace before he can really study her. Before he can wonder. 

“Hold on, Lance,” she whispers. 

“What…?” He holds onto her, but he doesn’t understand.

“They’re coming. They will always be there when you truly need them; you’re not alone.”

_ I’ll always be with you, Lance.  _

“What are you…?” 

Allura releases him, and her smile is strange. Wistful. “Say hello to the others for me?”

_ To those of us around this table, she will always be...family.  _

Lance gapes, and the world spins. Memory overtakes what he thought was reality, and in the moment he knows it’s all a dream...he wakes up. Like he always does. 

But this time instead of waking to his bedroom at home, he wakes to darkness and ropes and lingering pain. 

***

_ You destroy our work here...kill our leader…did you think some of us wouldn’t retaliate? _ they told him. 

Lance isn’t sure which one said it. Between shivering from the shocks, not knowing from which direction the next one would come, and sometimes the sting of a blade, he quickly lost track. 

“What happened to ’victory or death?’” he growled back. But they never answered his questions. Not directly. 

_ Your pathetic planet and its’ allies can’t suppress the might of the Galra Empire forever, Paladin. Not without Voltron. _

He tried to answer that. _ What Empire? _ But they stopped allowing him enough time to get a decent breath. 

He isn’t sure he remembers them leaving, or whether they left first or he passed out first. He can hear them above, floorboards creaking and groaning and telling him he must have been right. It’s a basement. Or something.

The concrete wall is cool against his back as Lance rests against it, almost a comforting contrast to the sweat gathering behind his knees and soaking his shirt and his hair. At least the blindfold has kept it out of his eyes. 

What do they really want? It can’t just...revenge can’t be it. It can't. He didn’t live through the war just to— 

Lance pulls in a breath and shoves the thoughts away as he strains to right himself against the wall enough to lean forward over his knees—enough to scrape his face across his jeans until he works the blindfold loose enough to push it up onto his forehead. He can hear himself whining low in his throat from the stinging across his stomach at the movement; when he finally works the blindfold up he drops back against the wall, gasping. 

There isn’t much more light now than there was before. One dim, bare bulb hangs halfway across the basement, only the edge of its light seeping into his corner. But it’s enough to see the nearly empty shelves looted of most of their cans and jars—probably taken long before the occupation ended. A broken chair. Cardboard boxes and milk crates on their sides. 

Something pulls at his memory...but it's probably only that it looks like any other basement, really. Any basement since the war and occupation, anyway. 

The source of his stomach pain, lines of blood have soaked through his shirt. In the long run, he can’t really have lost that much blood—he doesn’t think any of them are that deep, and the wound in his arm is more painful than serious—but the sight sends him closing his eyes against a bout of nausea anyway. A wave of lightheadedness that keeps him against the wall for a while longer.  

It isn’t the blood, or the loss of it. It isn’t even the pain. 

_ Why? _ Why now?

_ It’s over. It’s supposed to be over… _

Lance works at the ropes tying his wrists, but expending too much pressure to pull on them hurts too much to keep up. If his arm weren’t wounded and he weren’t already starting to lose some feeling in that one, maybe. But he’s not getting out of the ropes now. 

Fine. He can still get up those stairs. Maybe there’s something to overhear. These Galra have to be up to something. 

It’s slow going, but a litany of grunts and gasps and whimpers later and he has awkwardly crab-walked to the wooden steps. 

He still has to get up them. 

And then back to his corner before they notice. 

His arm is already burning almost as much as it did trying to pull free of the ropes, even though he’s trying to take most of the weight with the other, and as he slumps over the bottom of the stairs to rest for a moment he begins to wonder if this is worth it. 

No. No no no, it is. He isn’t giving up. He may not have built-in backup anymore, but he can do this.

Find out what they’re really after. Make a plan. Part of his mind is already kicking into overdrive. Part of it has already taken stock of everything in the basement that might be useful. 

The rest of him is what’s churning his gut, rebelling against the fact that this is even happening. 

_ Red...quiznak. Why do I miss you so much? Idiot...you’d have me out of here in two ticks flat. We’d teach these Galra a thing or two… _

_ Where are you? _

But there isn’t any answer. There hasn’t been for months. 

_ I know you had to go...I get it. I think. But... _

That was when the others went so quiet, Lance realizes faintly, as the rough wooden edge of one of the stairs presses into his forehead. When they all became more distracted. Called less.

Maybe...maybe he isn't the only one struggling.

But he can’t find out if he dies here. 

He won’t. He isn’t done yet. 

Lance pushes out a breath and hooks his good arm on the steps above him, tugging and pushing up with his bound feet to shuffle himself up to the next step. Tug, push, tug, push, pausing for breath when he needs the air and the break from the pain to keep himself from gasping aloud and alerting anyone upstairs as he gets closer to the door at the top. 

How long was he under before he woke up here the first time? How long was he insensate from their first visit? He has no way of knowing how long—how long he’s been without food and water. But he knows his mouth is dry and his stomach is empty and he feels shaky, though that last bit could just be from the shocks. 

It takes far too long just to get up the stairs. 

He can hear them arguing even before he presses an ear to the door, but it becomes more clear then.

“They’re never going to give us a ship.”

“They will if they want their paladin back.”

“The Champion is never going to negotiate.”

_ Shiro?  _ The Atlas is back? 

“If he wants to come, let him come. I’ll gladly take him on—him and any of the other paladins.”

A growl. “There is enough traffic on this planet now that we could have easily found another way off of it; one much less conspicuous. We cannot gather an army to raize this pathetic backwater if we are dead.”

“I will not sneak about in cargo holds; if you wish to do so, I would suggest you leave now.”

A third voice speaks up, but it’s the only one Lance can pinpoint. The first one he heard here. The one who was so eager to hurt him. 

“If you two are going to insist on wasting our time with pointless debate, I’m going to check on the prisoner.”

What?

Lance jerks back as footsteps make for the door, almost choking on the panic in his throat as he slides down a step. Going down is easier than up, but there’s no time. His eyes are wide when the door swings open; the Galra officer’s surprise only gives him a moment to take in the kitchen beyond...the handful of Galra...to wonder what they’ll do to him.

But it’s a moment long enough to realize he’s seen that kitchen before.

His hearts drops to his stomach, but a foot comes for his face before he can react. With no time to brace himself the impact sends him toppling backwards and down the stairs, head over heels and everything hurts, and he’s on the ground at the bottom now, isn’t he? So why is everything still spinning? Someone is groaning, and it must be him but he’s not quite aware of making the sounds.

Things snap back into focus with a purple face looming over him and sudden, sharp pain when a heavy booted foot comes down on his bound ankles. The jolt of agony when something gives way in one of them wrenches a scream from his throat, but of course the Galra doesn’t stop there. Of course he doesn’t. The foot comes down again, more than once, even with Lance trying to pull his own out of the way.

This time there’s no blindfold to catch the tears he can’t stop. 

Rough hands catch him under the arms and lug him back to his corner, his vision whiting out as his feet drag the floor. He can’t catch his breath until the Galra officer is nearly back up the stairs.

“Wait! I know this—” There isn’t enough air. “I-I know that kitchen! This...this house. They came back after the war! They should be here! Where are they!”

He’s eaten in that kitchen. The family had a son his age...a friend he used to play with when he was young. When the family made it back here after the war the son, Gabriel, had died trying to fight back in the Galra work camps, but the rest of them were still here. His parents. His sisters. Lance just...he saw them in town last week.

A careless laugh echoes in the dim basement. “Couldn’t have them alerting the locals.”

_ No… _

His eyes snap shut briefly. Echoes of childish laughter and bad dad jokes from Gabe’s parents over dinner claw at his memory.

It’s supposed to be over. This isn’t supposed to happen anymore.

“Why are you doing this?” Lance’s voice cracks, but he’s beyond the ability to be ashamed anymore. “The war is over! You lost!”

“It can’t be over if there are still casualties, can it, paladin?” 

Then Lance is alone. The door closes and the Galra officer is gone, but his face is still streaked with tears, and he doesn’t think the shivering is just cold or pain. He doesn’t feel quite in control as he shouts up at the closed door. 

“People fought and died for it to be OVER! Not for you to pretend it isn’t!”

So many people...humans here on earth during the occupation. Olkarion. People he knew…

Allura.

“You can’t do this! You can’t—!” 

Lives weren’t the only things lost. Childhoods. Connections. Innocence, maybe…

After all this time, maybe that’s what he’s crying for now. 

Lance wishes he knew for sure if that’s what still hurts so much in his chest.

_ Hold on, Lance. _

For a moment, he thinks he feels a hand on his cheek, maybe wiping at some of the tears for him.

But he’s probably just delirious.

***

“Wake up, paladin.”

There’s a jolt of pain up his legs from a strike at his ankles, but it's the gun in his face that brings Lance abruptly back to the world of the alert. He isn’t sure what his utter physical inability to react should tell him.

He can’t...he doesn’t know what the last thing he remembers is. The Galra officer above him is as blurred as his memory. Has it been three days since one of them kicked him down the stairs, or three hours?

Flashes of pain bite at his subconscious...his shoes are gone. So is the loosened blindfold he’d pushed up into his hair. They weren’t gone before. 

Lance opens his mouth, but he can’t answer the sneering Galra. Only a strange sound comes from his dry throat. 

“Face your death with what honor you have left.”

His heart beats faster, but even if he could really move, there is nowhere to go. Not backed into his corner like this. On the ground and trapped.

A weak sound of protest from his throat. No...He thought they wanted him alive to ransom. Something about a ship...leaving Earth. 

What’s happening?

“The Garrison seems to have pinpointed our location; if we die, you die, paladin. Victory or death.” 

The Galra officer seems so calm about it. Lance...isn’t. Maybe he couldn’t have said even a week ago that he was sure, but with a gun barrel in his face he can’t breathe. He doesn’t want to die. Not yet. 

Commotion above. Fighting. He can make it out, now, faintly, over the roaring in his ears. Is help here? Is he going to die with help or maybe even some of his friends just upstairs? Just out of reach? He tries to form words. Wait. Why? Something. But he doesn’t make it. Not before the sound of a gunshot.

His eyes snap shut on their own, sure it’s over, but there isn’t an impact. No new pain. Just a heavy thump beside him.

When his eyes fly open again a new form is swimming in his hazy vision, back near the stairs, Garrison gear and white hair and the gleam of metal on one side. 

A sob breaks from his throat, and Lance is finally able to croak out a whisper. “Shiro…”   


An arm lowers and the form hurries closer, crouching beside him until the face resolves, worry and anger and relief warring to pull at the familiar features. “Lance? We’re here. You’re safe now. I’m so sorry…”

He’s pulled gently against a warm chest. It’s warmer than he’s been in...days? It must have been days. Shiro is still saying things, but he can’t make most of it out for sobbing. He doesn’t have the energy to do it very hard, but at some point the heavy bulletproof vest disappeared and he’s soaking the front of Shiro’s uniform. 

“Should have...been over. Supposed to be over…” He’s babbling. Lance knows he is, but he can’t make it stop. 

“I know.”

“They k...th-they k-killed them...my fault…!”

“It’s not your fault, Lance.”

“W-why...why…?”

“I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Lance. I don’t know. I’m sorry…”

His shoulders scream at him when someone cuts the ropes tying his wrists, and he think he cries out in pain. Someone is rubbing his shoulders, trying to make them less painful and carefully avoiding the wound at the back of his arm. 

“Easy, buddy, yeah, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, man, I know they’ve gotta hurt.”

“H...H-Hunk…?”

A gentle rub at his back. “I’m right here, Lance.”

More movement, and someone else is crouched in front of him, tilting a bottle of water to his lips. A small hand against the back of his head to brace it as he drinks, and worried honey eyes. 

“Thanks...Pidge…” he murmurs, when the bottle lowers. 

Everything else still hurts. He’s so tired and he can barely see them. But his chest is starting to hurt less, and it isn’t the water.

There are footsteps on the stairs, and another familiar voice. “That’s the last of them. There were about a dozen in total. We—” 

Keith. Blade of Marmora suit, knife and all. He stops on the stairs when he sees the rest of them. Lance can’t make out what his face is saying from here. 

“I um...I’ll make sure they know we’ll need a medical team to get Lance out of here.”

“We should bring him back to the Garrison,” Pidge says. “Tell them to call my dad and arrange a wormhole.”

Keith nods and disappears again. 

Lance swallows. “You’re...you’re all…”

“Of course we are, buddy,” Hunk says quietly. “You needed us.”

Pidge glances up the stairs after Keith. “He asked for a wormhole here to join the rescue as soon as he got our message.”

_ They will always be there when you truly need them; you’re not alone. _

Keith comes back soon enough with news that they should have help soon, standing awkwardly above the rest of them until his gaze rests on Lance’s ankles and he makes a face.

“Yeah…” Hunk says. “At least one of those looks really bad; I wasn’t sure what to...yeah. 

Keith drags over an empty, upturned crate. “Shiro, can you…?”

“Yeah.” He shifts, carefully helping Lance move until his back is against Shiro’s shoulder rather than his face buried in it, so his legs can be elevated. 

For a moment, as Keith and Hunk gently bend his legs at the knees lift his feet onto the crate, everything whites out again. When he opens his eyes Pidge is squeezing one of his hands and Keith is carefully cutting away the ropes around his ankles, but...it’s better now. With the pressure off of both of them. Better than it was, anyway. 

“Lance?” Pidge asks. He’s still catching his breath, but he nods tightly.

“I think just the one of them is actually broken, but I guess they’ll tell us,” Keith is saying. 

“You an...expert now, Mullet?” Lance teases, when he can speak at all. He doesn’t know why he does it, really. Maybe it’s how close he is to passing out again after that. He isn’t awake enough to come up with something else to say. A better way to say thank you. Not just to Keith, but all of them.

“Shut up, Lance,” Keith answers. It seems automatic, but there’s a small smile with it. Concerned but relieved. 

Lance grins back with the last of his energy. Exhaustion tugs at his eyelids, but before everything can fade he lets his gaze track over all of them. The warmth spreading in his chest makes him feel safe enough to close his eyes again. 

***

When Lance wakes up again in a hospital bed, they’re all still there. He expected Keith might have left again, but he hasn’t. He’s asleep in the window seat behind the chair Shiro is conked out in. Pidge is dozing across the edge of his bed, and Hunk is snoring with his head in his arms on the mattress and the rest of him slumped in a chair beside it. 

He isn’t alone. 

He never was. 

Lance lets them sleep until the door all but crashes open. “There you are, my boy!”

“Coran?” 

“I must say, I’ve never understood how these Earth facilities can be easier to get lost in than an Altean castle four times their size.”

The Altean is across the room wrapping him in a maybe-not-entirely-careful embrace in an instant, and so much for letting everyone sleep. “Coran, you BUILT the castle; of course you know where everything is.”

The others shake themselves awake one by one, yawning and greeting Coran and asking Lance how he is. He can’t really answer that question, beyond being relatively certain he’s rather drugged, and maybe that’s why what he says comes out so abruptly. 

“I m...I missed you guys.” Did that come out kind of pathetic? Maybe it doesn’t matter. They’re his friends...his family. “We can’t...once a year isn’t enough.”

Silence, for a long moment. In the way they’re all quiet, he thinks he hit a nerve. But maybe not necessarily in a bad way.

Maybe he really isn’t the only one who isn’t fine. Maybe they all have a lot to figure out. 

“You’re right,” Shiro says. 

Pidge is nodding. “I miss you guys too.”

Keith and Coran seem to be in agreement even if they don’t answer aloud, and Hunk swallows. “Yeah...we should do better. I mean...we need each other, guys.”

If they can remember that...they can figure out the rest together. 

“Your parents are here,” Shiro tells Lance a bit later. “We convinced them to go find something better to eat and a place to rest for a while; you’ve been out for a couple of days.”

Lance can see the signs now; the half-empty snack containers and overnight bags in the corners of the room...one of his mother’s sweaters balled up where Keith’s head had been on the window seat. 

“Oh!” Hunk adds. He reaches for something on the ledge behind the bed and drops a cloth bag into Lance’s hands. “Your mom brought this for you; she said she didn’t know how long you’d be laid up here or if your arm would hurt too much even if it was a while, but she found this on your desk and figured you’d want it.”

Pidge smirks from her perch on the edge of the bed. “She said something about needing the practice after all that time in space.”

“What?” Lance chuckles. He digs into the contents, finding yarn and his knitting needles—no surprise there—but tucked into the side of the familiar bag is another he’s never seen before, the cloth handles wrapped around it to keep the contents separate.

When he pulls it out and unwraps it, a set of colored scarves drops into his lap. Blue, red, black, green, yellow, orange...

“Lance?” Shiro asks.

_ I would like to be able to produce simple gifts for those I care about. IS that so much to ask? _

A nudge at one of his shoulders. “Hey...Lance?” Hunk asks. “You okay?”

He doesn’t realize his face is damp until he blinks. “I…” The blue knitted scarf is soft between his hands, one end wider than the other just the way he remembers it.

From the dreams. 

“Yeah,” Lance says softly. 

Coran raises an eyebrow at him. “What is it, my boy?”

_ Say hello to the others for me? _

A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth as Lance swipes at his cheeks. “You guys might want to sit down.”


End file.
